Voyagers Movie Review

Voyagers (2021)

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Written by: Neil Burger
Directed by: Neil Burger
Starring: Colin Farrell, Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp, Isaac Hempstead Wright, Fionn Whitehead
Rated: PG-13
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Plot
A crew of young astronauts bred for a multi-generational mission defy their training and succumb to their primitive impulses, creating a power struggle.

Verdict
A study on human nature that I wish was more subtle and a little deeper. It's full of thrills, but it's the lack of thoughtfulness about the ideas in the movie that keep this generic. Young astronauts suddenly have a rush of hormones, unprepared and untrained to deal with their new desires and feelings. That's about as insightful as this gets, and that's the problem. The rest of this movie is the 'good guys' versus the 'bad guys.'
It depends.

Review
I didn't expect much from this, but I enjoy sci-fi even if it's subpar. This is better than I had hoped. Just knowing this was a bunch of young people on a spaceship I figured it was a plan to repopuplate a new planet, but this is a bit more intricate than that thankfully. It's a bit of a twist on the usual trope.

A young crew has been created to pilot the spaceship to a distant planet. The kids age up quickly, but apparently they stop aging quickly once they are no longer teens. I'm not sure how that works. The underpinnings of the story are weak unfortunately. The focus is what happens when a bunch of young adults who've been emotionally repressed get off the medication and have no one to keep them in line while being trapped in a spaceship. I was never sure how old they were supposed to be.

Two of the crew stop taking the hormone suppressants. They soon start acting like a couple of rowdy kids. All those emotions hit at one time and of course bad decisions follow as other crew members follow their lead. I figured this would be a power play between the crew, but an external threat creates a division among the entire crew.

Lily-Rose Depp and Tye Sheridan play Sela and Chris.

The young crew was supposed to be up there with no 'parent,' but Richard joins the mission because he wants to explore space and he's seen these kids grow up. Is an authority figure what created the distrust or are humans predispositioned to question authority and rules? Zac (Fionn Whitehead) is power hungry and the obvious antagonist. Chris (Tye Sheridan) and Sela (Lily-Rose Depp) are the protagonists. It's clear violence is inevitable. Zac attempts to rule by playing on paranoia and acceptance and that triumphs over Chris and truth.

Fionn Whitehead plays Zac.

I wish the movie was more subtle. This uses quick cut scenes to convey the crews' emotions are unlocked, but the scenes are for our benefit as it's images and memories the crew wouldn't have. They don't have a basis of understanding for sexual desire, but the movie avoids those subtleties about the crews' lack of social knowledge. Their emotional level should be childlike.

Masking emotions masked their true nature. Some people are more aggressive, self-centered, and antagonistic. Masking emotions hid that. Some have impulses for power and cruelty, others for loyalty and caring. It's easy for use to see Zac's play for power, and I feel like the crew should see that too. I wish more thought was put into how people act and react. I believe that most people avoid conflict and will side with people that crave power, but the movie doesn't delve into it. This is just a bit too simple. The way they were dosed was a poor choice, no doubt to make it easy for some of them to stop and set up the plot.

This keeps the tension high and the pacing isn't bad, but I wondered where this would go. It seems like this can only go one way, bad. This really is a study of human nature, and I wish it did more in that regard.Would bad qualities really remain hidden if you remove hormones? This touches a bit on nature and nurture. This could explore why people follow and it's likely just to stay alive, but we don't get that perspective. This needs more layers. The questions this hints at are better than what it actually addresses. This is basically a space thriller that could have been more.